The Dreams That Dream Me

from the land of dreams in the misty island. Or, alternatively, from the flat above a shop on the Kentish Town Road, amidst the shouts of the midnight drunks and the police sirens.

Saturday, September 30, 2006

red currents

Friday; September 29, 2006 2:13 PM

It is like floating in a liquid, some sort of amniotic primordial cordial in a red semi-darkness. except you know you are in the world. There is something more of that womb-like feeling: time is elastic, every instant lasts forever, or near forever and after ages of something beginning to happen it is quite a surprise that it does finish and conclude. I remember the admonition, 'do not go towards the bright lights' and smile. There are none here, everything is diffused and soft and warm -or perhaps not exactly warm, it just has no temperature. I am not sure whether I can float, or perhaps fly is a better word -but I find it difficult to think in terms of words, in terms of representation. Things here just are themselves, not something else.

Maybe I can navigate this world. There are features, passages and ridges and turns, I could learn them and come back here. But I don't know whether this particular location (if it is a location: more on this later) is significant or important in any way. I don't know whether what I can see is all there is to this world -it could be that those passages sort of wrap around and bring myself here, to this starting point again. This is possible, I can see strange mirror effects at the end of the distant tunnels. There is only one way to get to know.

Maybe I'm wrong. The tunnels are, for one thing, far bigger than they seemed from where I started. Then I realise, at some point, that there is a shadow moving in a distant tunnel, visible through the semi translucent walls of the gallery I am in. It is only a passing fleeting impression, something familiar but terrifying, for some reason. Not sure what is the worse thing, to be alone here... or not be alone.

I can make out more of the figure in that other tunnel. If I strain my eyes I can see a figure similar to myself, similar clothing, similar build or so it would seem from here, similar long hair. But now I see another shadow, a bigger one, terrifying even though I can not clearly make it out, blocking his way. He's plucked clean out of the small boat -if boat it is, that he is in, and disappears into the larger shadow, eyes and mouth wide open in s silent distant scream. Then I see in the distance, through the walls of yet more tunnels, another, similar figure on what looks like a small boat... further on in the tunnel I can see something lying in wait...

Then I realise that I am on a kind of small boat, which flows down the current of the passage even though I'm not rowing or steering it and I can feel no current. And I think I know, as I approach a bend in the tunnel, what I will see next. And I try to scream but no sound comes out....

Friday, September 22, 2006

travelling dreams

13-09-06

I was again at the port, or was it the train station, ready to set out for my mysterious journey that would take me to that place South again. Then I learnt that it was not south at all but north and that i could have flown there. But I didn't want to fly anyway. I had memories of those ghostly flights to Los Nevados in which the place would melt and disappear in the mist and we would be left to climb the steep mountain, all the while seeing the cable car wagons slide up in the sky towards where we were going, far away and up in the heart of the mountain mist.

I had some doubt as to whether it was the same place up north that had been south, the route was different, the ticket they'd given me was different -where had I put that ticket, by the way? it was not in my pocket. But I had to have it on me, I hadn't been anywhere and I hadn't lost my luggage yet.

For some reason the train carriage reminded me of my room upstairs in my old house in Catia. How could a train carriage have cement floors? And leaky ones at that, and not level. A small screen at the front of the carriage showed a toy town-like map with features in primary colours and a big orange arrow reading 'You are here' which slowly moved as we shifted and left behind large gulps of landscape. Then I noticed the woman. She was blond and had her hair tied back, she had an acute, slightly aquiline note. She wasn't beautiful but was possibly the most attractive woman I'd ever seen. But, where had I put my coat? And my guitar? And my friends? I was sure I'd been with friends a short while ago.

I looked everywhere -found my guitar and my case, in the lower deck of the carriage, but never found my coat. Got off at the station when they called out the name through the addressing system. It was desolate. Tumbleweeds, a torn poster on a billboard, the air of a place where nobody had set foot for a very long time. I couldn't see the town behind the station, there were tall board fences with more torn billboards, only half-visible through the tall grass.

There was s red building like a Roman circus, surrounded by an expanse of dirt and litter. Paint peeling, old posters with toreadors and boxers torn and barely clinging to the wall. I was alone and no longer knew what I was supposed to do in this place, who I was supposed to meet, even where it was, geographically. I had been convinced I was still in Venezuela,, but some of the posters and the street signs seemed to be in English and other languages I did not know. The afternoon was drawing in and I was wondering -If I had to spend the night in this place, where would I stay? It might be better to go back to the station and take a train back. Or a bus, anything... I had a moment of panic when I couldn't think of the way back to the station, but then it appeared there in front of me at the turn of a corner. It seemed even more deserted and derelict than when I arrived a while before. I was alone, far away, with only the faintest idea of how to get back home...

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